It was 2010, and Eric Pearson had spent the past eight years working menial gig after menial gig — from pizza delivery guy to messenger to ticket-taker at an arthouse theater in West Hollywood, the closest the aspiring screenwriter could get to the film industry. “It was close, man,” Pearson told Yahoo Entertainment last week at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills, on the day Thor: Ragnarok, the first movie for which he’s been the central writer, opened across the world. Pearson, who’d already given up his dream of becoming an actor (“I was just bad, I know it now, too, and I probably even knew it then,” he laughed) and studied screenwriting at New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts, had one last shot to escape the unsustainable clutches of the minimum wage.

Thor: Ragnarok is the third standalone adventure featuring Marvel’s Asgardian God of Thunder — and also the third Thor movie (after 2011’s Thor and 2013’s Thor: The Dark World) to feature a gratuitous shot of star Chris Hemsworth sans shirt for an extended scene. “And then [director] Taika Waititi came up to me and was said, ‘Ah, I feel like we got to put it in there. As Hemsworth stated at the top of the interview, he was asked by Thor director Kenneth Branagh to do a “shirt off” scene in the first film, and Hemsworth told MTV in 2013 that Marvel consigliere Joss Whedon suggested they add a similar sequence to Dark World.

Thor: Ragnarok has already spawned Marvel’s most-watched trailer ever. Now the threequel is spawning some smashing toys. Hasbro has begun unveiling its lineup and, as with the Lego playsets we revealed earlier, the toys and role-play items play up the gladiatorial match between Avengers frenemies Hulk and Thor.

The 2017 edition of the E3 Expo — the annual synapse-busting video-game show — just wrapped in Los Angeles, putting joystick jockeys up close and personal with the likes of Spider-Man, Beetlejuice, Darth Maul, and Donald Duck. Yahoo Movies toured the halls and sampled the wares, along the way discovering some sweet-looking titles that have a Hollywood hook. Here are eight worth checking out for film fans of all ages.

Thor: Ragnarok , the threequel in the ongoing saga of the Asgardian Avenger, finds our hammer-less hero (again played by Chris Hemsworth) trapped by a cosmic being and forced to fight his not-so-jolly green friend, the Hulk (with Mark Ruffalo back as Bruce Banner). Meanwhile, across the galaxy, Thor’s homeland is facing destruction. Along with returning characters like Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, Anthony Hopkins’s Odin, and even Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange, the film introduces Cate Blanchett as the death-goddess Hela and Tessa Thompson as Thor’s formidable ally Valkyrie. ...

Today in Hollywood, Marvel lifted the curtain on “Phase Three” of its cinematic universe to a packed house of oohing and ahhing costumed Thors and Captain Americas. Studio boss Kevin Feige filled in all the blanks on the studio’s slate through 2019, introduced several new characters — including many fan favorites — and confirmed speculation that classic comic book storylines would be adapted for the screen. After the fan presentation, Feige answered questions about the future of a studio whose previous two phases included 10 films and more than $7 billion in worldwide ticket sales.